The Summer of Speed

In this, the last BiTD episode of 2012, The Guys Outta Brooklyn revisit The Summer (now Winter) Of Speed to examine a trio of films where the cars are secondary to psychological introspection and angst! Join Tom and Derrick as they express their love of Two-Lane Blacktop! Enjoy Derrick’s reminiscences about seeing Vanishing Point in the theaters! Laugh as Tom tries to cover up how he misremembered Zabrinskie Point! And decide for yourself whether ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ is a charming seduction or date rape! If you like Pina Coladas, you best get to clicking!

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Just in time for Summer to, well, almost be over, Tom and Derrick kick off The Summer Of Speed with one of the most popular car-nographic film series of the modern era, The Fast and The Furious! Join the Boys Outta Brooklyn as they rev up their engines and race though all five adventures with automobile-loving rogue Dominic Toretto and the worst cop in the world, Brian O’Conner…in addition to the Roger Corman produced car racing melodrama that inspired the series. All this plus listener mail, what we really want to see Michelle Rodriguez do, and the continuing debate over whether Eva Mendes is hot in her own right or a Raquel Welch wannabe! You don’t wanna granny clutch that hoss, so get to clicking!

In the “Lethal Weapon” movies Mel Gibson played L.A. police detective Martin Riggs who undergoes such a severe psychological trauma when his wife is killed that the common held belief is that he’s gone straight flat out crazy. Insane. Mad, even. That’s the main trait shared with an earlier Mel Gibson character: Australian highway cop Max Rockatansky who undergoes such a severe psychological trauma when his wife and son are killed that the common held belief is that he’s gone straight flat out crazy. Insane. Mad, even. In fact, so mad that he’s called MAD MAX.

The movie is set in Australia of the near future after some sort of global disaster. We’re never told in this movie what the disaster was but the two sequels to MAD MAX make it clear that the world superpowers finally threw down over dwindling oil resources. Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) is a highway cop in The Outback. Along with his partner Jim Goose (Steve Bisley) and the other members of the small band of cops known as The Main Force Patrol, they do their best to protect the public from marauding bands of motorcycle gangs that roam the highways, looting, raping, pillaging and just generally carrying on cranky.

The cops are so poorly funded that their headquarters, the ironically named Hall of Justice looks like a rotting pigsty with only one half-crazed mechanic to keep their vehicles running. The MFP has a hideously dangerous run-in with a psychotic called The Night Rider who steals one of their souped up Interceptors and leads them on a terrifying high speed pursuit that ends in several civilian and police cars wrecked, an officer severely injured and The Night Rider dead.

This starts Max to thinking that maybe it’s time for him to get out. He’s got a wife (Joanne Samuel) and a baby boy he’d like to be around to grow old with. The Goose conspires with their boss, Fifi Macaffie (Roger Ward) to get Max to stay by bribing him with a customized Ford Falcon with a supercharged V8 engine. Max is Fifi’s best cop and if he loses Max then the MFP is going to be in real trouble as they’re barely holding their own against the vicious motorcycle gangs as it is.

The situation heats up when The Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) the leader of the gang that The Night Rider was a member of decides to wage war on The MFP and takes a horrible revenge on Jim Goose, setting a trap for him and burning him alive while he’s trapped in a flipped over truck. This decides it for Max. He turns in his resignation, takes his wife and son and heads north, determined to find peace for them while he’s still able. But Max is next on The Toecutter’s list of revenge. And if he can’t have Max then he’ll settle for Max’s wife and son instead.

MAD MAX is a good example of what is meant by ‘grindhouse’. It’s a straight-up B-budget action/adventure with no other purpose than to entertain. I vividly remember seeing this on 42end Street back when it really was 42end Street and thinking even then it was pretty damn cool. I watched it last night for about the 12th time and I still think it’s pretty damn cool. Primarily because of the highly exciting action sequences. George Miller knows how to film action. And he knows how to film car chases. Back in the 70’s audiences had become pretty jaded when it came to car chases because just about every action movie back then definitely had one, sometimes two and if they could figure out any way possible then dammit, they’d throw in three. But George Miller really has a way of making car chases so energized that you don’t feel like you’ve seen these car chases before.

And even though I’ve got nothing against CGI, I dearly love action films of the 70’s and 80’s because you know that these are real guys in real cars doing these stunts. When cars are slamming into eighteen-wheelers at 90 miles an hour or guys go flying through the air to land on concrete and roll for another 50 feet you feel it because you can see it’s an actual human being getting busted up and not a CGI. It also gives an air of believability to the action because nobody is breaking the laws of physics here. The fighting is sweaty, brutal and painful. Especially in the scenes where Mad Max faces down The Toecutter and his protégé Johnny The Boy (Tim Burns) during which Max is shot and run over with a motorcycle. Max doesn’t shrug off his wounds and get up to whoop ass. He gets up, sure, but it takes time, it hurts like hell and even back then Mel Gibson was a good enough actor to sell the scene.

This being Mel Gibson’s first major starring role is probably the reason most will want to see a movie that’s almost 35 years old and even then you can see the easy charm as well as the grim intensity that would bring him international fame. He’s as competent as you would imagine in the action sequences but he’s also amazingly gentle and warm in the scenes with Joanne Samuel who plays his wife. They have a real chemistry together and it’s not hard to buy them as a young couple in love. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Gibson blows the screen apart but he’s a helluva lot better in his first film than a lot of others I’ve seen. Steve Bisley as Max’s partner Jim Goose is so full of life and so likeable that you wish he had more screen time. He’s got one of those grins that you’ve seen before: he’s either just put one over on you or he’s about to. Either way, you’re gonna let him because you just can’t resist that grin. Roger Ward is one of my favorites in this movie. Despite being named Fifi, he’s a towering slab of man, bald as a rock, always chewing on a cigar, wearing a flowing black scarf and telling his boys: “Do whatever you want out on the road as long as the paperwork’s straight!”

Hugh Keays-Byrne does something really remarkable with The Toecutter in that you really get the sense that this is a guy who actually tunes into the wavelength of a world we can’t see. He leaves the stereotypical villain-type acting stuff to Tim Burns who plays Johnny The Boy as a cowardly bad guy. Much more interesting and fun is Geoff Parry as The Toecutter’s enforcer, Bubba Zanetti. He’s the main source of humor in the movie as he delivers some really goofy lines but in a sober, dead-pan manner that I found both utterly hilarious and totally chilling. He was a character I wanted to know more about as compared to The Toecutter and Johnny The Boy he seems rational, calm and he gives The Toecutter advice that is perfectly sane. I wanted to know how Bubba ended up with these guys but unless George Miller decides to do a prequel, my curiosity will continue.

MAD MAX was followed by two sequels: “The Road Warrior” and “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” each of which I heartily recommend. Both movies aren’t just rehashing the first movie. They continue the story of Max Rockatansky, deepening his character and humanity even as the world slides further and further into barbarism. Taken as a whole they’re not only classic action/adventure but also a forerunner of just about every adventure trilogy you see nowadays. If you haven’t seen MAD MAX in a while, treat yourself. And if you’ve never seen it, why don’t you? Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not a 100 million buck summer blockbuster but the lack of a budget actually gives the movie a hard and gritty reality that a lot of today’s movies simply don’t have. And it’s simply just a lot of fun to watch. Enjoy.

93 minutes

Rated: R

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Some time back I wrote of review of the existential car chase thriller “Vanishing Point” and I received an email from a gentleman (at least I think it’s a gentleman…you can’t always tell just by email addresses) who informed me that he had seen the movie on my recommendation and found it pretentious and pointless and suggested that I watch and review what he considered to be a much better movie revolving around car chases: Walter Hill’s 1978 crime thriller THE DRIVER I vaguely remember seeing THE DRIVER years ago at 42end Street. This was back in the day when you could see three movies for 5 bucks and frankly, I remember the other two movies much better but thanks to The Fox Movie Channel I had a chance to see it again recently. Maybe “Vanishing Point” is pretentious but THE DRIVER takes pretentiousness to an almost Zen-like level to the point where the characters don’t even have names. They are just identified by what they are and what they do.

The Driver (Ryan O’Neal) is an undisputed professional master of driving getaway cars. He does not participate in the actual robbery. He drives and that’s all. He commands a flat fee of $10,000 up front and 15% of the take. And he’s worth it because he guarantees that you won’t get caught. His driving abilities are inhumanly unnerving and he never displays any emotion at all. The man’s a driving machine. His nemesis is The Detective (Bruce Dern) who badly wants to catch The Driver. So obsessed is he with catching The Driver he puts his career on the line by recruiting a second-rate gang of bank robbers to hire The Driver. The Detective will ensure that the gang will rob the bank and get away then they’ll bring The Driver and the money to a spot where The Detective will be waiting to arrest The Driver, take the money and let the gang get away. Of course, the plan doesn’t work out and pretty soon everybody’s double-crossed everybody else and the gang, The Driver and The Detective are all scrambling for the half-million robbery loot while The Driver and The Detective play their own cat-and-mouse game of Catch Me If You Can. You see, The Detective has told The Driver the robbery is a set-up and he dares him to pull it off and get away. The Driver takes the challenge and the game’s afoot…or awheel, I suppose is a better phrase in this case.

And that’s there is all, folks. That is all the movie is about. THE DRIVER is probably the most stripped down movie I’ve ever seen. There’s no characterizations, no background information about anybody given, No extra characters, no dialog exchanged that does not relate directly to the plot, no flashbacks, no nothing except for what is happening right at the moment. In fact, there isn’t that much dialog. Supposedly Ryan O’Neal only speaks 350 words in the whole movie and I think that’s stretching it. Bruce Dern has most the dialog as The Detective and he’s really the main character in this thing as he has motivations and desires that we can understand and even though he’s a bit of a bastard at least he’s a human bastard. Ryan O’Neal’s Driver is such an emotionless humanoid that we never understand why he does what he does. He doesn’t seem to enjoy his work and we never see what he does with the money he makes. He wears the same clothes throughout the movie and lives in a cheap hotel. He only has three relationships: The Connection (Ronee Blakely) who sets up his jobs, The Player (Isabelle Adjani) a professional gambler who deliberately misidentifies The Driver in a police line-up, enabling him to avoid arrest and his pocket transistor radio.

There’s no point in talking about the performances in this one because outside of Bruce Dern’s, there are none. This movie is all about plot and Walter Hill, who wrote and directed THE DRIVER cares about nothing else. This movie is nowhere as good as some others he’s done such as the “The Warriors” and “Streets of Fire” which are both classics and I’d advise anybody to Netflix “The Long Riders” “Johnny Handsome” or “Extreme Prejudice” before this one.

Even the car chase scenes aren’t all that exciting but I liked them a lot because back then when movies did car chases you knew that some fool was actually doing the driving and when a car flipped over, it was because a trained and experience stuntman was doing it and it added a sense of realism. For sheer exhilaration, none of the car chases in THE DRIVER don’t match anything done today, true, but it works for this movie because it gives it a gritty realism. None of the driving stunts done here don’t seem like anything that couldn’t be done in real life and I liked that. After all, The Driver is supposed to be trying to get away from the cops, not showing off how many aerial acrobatics he can do. The whole movie has a realistic feel to it that is probably the movie’s greatest strength. Nobody here takes a whole clip of .45 slugs in the chest then drags himself or herself half a mile before expiring. You get shot and you fall over dead. End of story. There’s no meaningless romance between The Driver and the two women he knows just to have a romantic subplot. These people are involved in a dirty, dangerous business and they conduct themselves accordingly.

There is one really cool scene where The Driver is asked to demonstrate his skill and he does so by proceeding to demolish a car while he and three passengers are inside. They climb out completely unharmed but the car is a wreck and still able to run. But that comes halfway through the movie and it’s over much too soon.

So should you see THE DRIVER? I can think of a couple of reasons why you might want to: if you’re a Walter Hill fan like me, you’ll want to check out this early work of his. Hill is an infuriating hit-or-miss director. When he’s good, he’s very good but when he’s bad he’s even worse and THE DRIVER is an example of this, especially in the last five minutes of the movie when you’ll probably be screaming at the screen; “That’s IT????” even as the credits are rolling. If you like Bruce Dern you’ll also enjoy seeing him in this one as he really doesn’t get to play a cop that often but when he does, he makes the most of it. If you like him as a cop here, check out “The Laughing Policeman”.

But as for THE DRIVER if you’re at all curious by all means check it out. But if you’re not, don’t worry, you won’t be missing a thing.

Last year my Better In The Dark co-host Thomas Deja and I got the idea for a theme for the summer of 2012 which we called “The Summer of Speed” The idea was to do episodes reviewing movies based around cars or where cars play a major role. Naturally we immediately hit on doing an episode on the entire “Fast and Furious” series which you can find here . I also saw this as an opportunity to do the same theme here at The Ferguson Theater and review movies I’ve been meaning to review for the longest but have been neglecting. Movies such as “Speed Racer” “The Cannonball Run” “Smokey and The Bandit” and “Greased Lightning”. Now being anal as I am, I insisted to Tom that I wanted to start with the original THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS made in 1955. He said I could go knock myself out and now I see why. This movie does not follow The Ferguson Rule Of Truth In Movie Advertising in that it is neither Fast nor is it Furious.

Frank Webster (John Ireland) is a man on the run. Doing time for a murder he didn’t commit, he manages to bust outta the hoosegow and take it on the lam. The dragnet cast out for him is extensive and closing on him fast. He needs a quick way out of his situation and finds it thanks to Connie Adair (Dorothy Malone) who is driving a Jaguar. While sitting in a roadside diner, Frank overhears Connie telling the waitress that she’s on her way to participate in a cross country race where the finish line is in Mexico. Frank sees this as a perfect cover to get away. Frank takes Connie hostage and they head for the race.

The bulk of the movie is taken up with Connie pleading for Frank to let her go even though there are numerous opportunities where she could get away but doesn’t take advantage of it. And for a guy who’s trying not to arouse any suspicion, Frank does a lot of suspicious things that cause many of the people he meets at the race to raise their eyebrows and ask Connie, “Hey, you sure this guy is okay?”

Turns out that the race officials have changed the rules so that women can’t participate in the race saying that they’ve deemed it “too dangerous for a woman.” So Frank has to put himself in the race so that he won’t raise any more eyebrows than he already has. It’s during his qualifying run for the race where Frank and Connie start to bond a little. He tells her what really happened to get him thrown in jail and she urges him to give himself up and even offers to help. Frank quite naturally tells her to get stuffed. Now somehow through all this back-and-forth, they manage to fall in love. So much so that Frank jeopardizes his freedom to drive Connie’s car in what has to be the most boring car race I’ve seen on film.

Thankfully the movie is only 73 minutes long so if you do decide to watch it, it’s mercifully short. Apparently the producers of the Vin Diesel remake bought the rights to the movie just because they wanted the title. And I can understand that: it’s a good title. One that is wasted on this movie. It’s worth watching if you’re a Roger Corman fan and want to watch this because of his involvement in it but that’s about I can recommend it for. I really didn’t care a poobah’s pizzle about anybody in this movie and while Dorothy Malone tries her best to inject some life into her scenes with John Ireland, he’s no help at all as his idea of acting is to just stand there and look constipated. Their romance is entirely unconvincing and when I got to the end of the movie I howled, “That’s it?”

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS is available for streaming on Netflix and you can also see it the entire movie on YouTube which I’ve provided for you right here if you care to see it. If you don’t want to, I quite understand.